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Sweaty Hands: Heavy Rain

For our blog Sweaty Hands, a revolving cast of musicians, artists and video game connoisseurs reviews games for PS3, Xbox360 and whatever other consoles exist and are playable. For this installment, Nathan Williams of Wavves reviews Heavy Rain for PlayStation 3.

Heavy Rain is unlike any other game I've ever played before. It's a serious interactive movie and every action you make dictates how your personal story/Heavy Rain experience turns out. It starts a little slow, which makes room for the plot to actually set itself up, and at first all the menial tasks you have to do (rock a baby to sleep, grab dishes for your wife, play with your son) seem kind of boring. But that also sets up exactly how to control your character's actions, which will be important later on when you're fighting or in other high-stress situations, such as chopping off your own fingers with a rusty butcher knife. (Without context that won't make much sense and I don't want to give anything away so fuck an explanation, just play it and find out for yourself!)

Really, the driving element of Heavy Rain is the story (DUUUUH)—there are four characters and four possible endings, with the plotline based mostly around the lengths a father will go to to save his son. The actual story line is a little flat at points, falling somewhere between Saw II and Seven, but the objective is to eventually just see how it all turns out, like a movie. It's pretty long for a movie, though, and for a video game it's pretty short. It's probably around six or so hours to beat? It took me two days, so it's a pretty quick run. My girlfriend didn't even mind watching me play it, because Heavy Rain connects with whomever is watching or playing. Minus a couple small plot holes, this game is a total banger and comes highly recommended accompanied with orange juice and a blunt.